Public Bill Committee

[Mr David Amess in the Chair]

David Amess: On this beautiful spring morning, we meet to discuss new clause 8.

New Clause 8  - Annual report: consumer rights

‘(1) The Secretary of State must prepare and publish an annual report of the effect of public policy in the area of consumer rights and must lay a copy of the report before Parliament.
(2) The Report shall, with particular regard to low income households, include an assessment of the effect on—
(a) household bills; and
(b) affordability.’.—(Stella Creasy.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Stella Creasy: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
First, let me put on record that I agree; it is a beautiful spring morning. Let us hope that we have a beautiful debate, inspired by the sunshine and the lifting of the fog. I hope that the two new clauses that we have tabled will lift the fog for consumers about a number of issues. I should add that I promise not to indulge in too many puns. It is only right that people have a notion that our debate is fit for purpose, and some of the puns about zoos at our last sitting were probably not satisfactory.
New clause 8 deals with a question that has dominated public life for the past couple of years and that is certainly at the top of the issues my constituents come to me about: the cost of living or, more precisely, how people are going to make ends meet. It is a critical issue for consumers, because consumer policy is really about a basic issue: the impact on our constituents. What is the impact on their lives of the choices and decisions made by private and public actors?
It is fascinating that, among European nations, only Estonia has a higher proportion of people struggling to pay their energy bills than the UK. We know the numbers of people who have been under pressure over the last couple of years. I certainly find in my constituency, as I am sure other Members do in theirs, that household bills are often the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
In the past five years, there has been a recession like no other when it comes to the money in people’s pockets. In contrast to other recessions, we have seen inflation rise but pay fall, so there has been a phenomenal squeeze on people’s money. Due to the everyday living costs they face, a third of people have put aside no money at all for a rainy day, and those who have have been forced to dip into that money to cover their costs. Nearly three quarters of people surveyed by the Money Advice Service say that in the past year, their budgeting has been knocked off course by a bill.
From our debates in Committee, Members will know of my obsession with debt, debt management and the consequences of people’s choices to deal with debt. The first and foremost question is: why are people getting into debt? The Money Advice Service research tells us—many of us know this, overwhelmingly from our constituencies—that it is not because people are being profligate, but because the cost of living has risen so substantially over the past couple of years and is continuing to rise. The issue is those household bills. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to consumers that we understand the impact of household bills on their bank balances and on our future economy. Although the economy is, by all means, starting to show fragile roots of recovery, more people are still worried about their debt than ever before, which shows us the challenge to come.
The new clause is about understanding some of those pressures and their impact on people. As many people have recognised—indeed, the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has recognised this—our economy is not recovering in the sustainable way we might want. At the moment, the recovery is built on people getting into debt, spending their savings or taking out loans—often payday loans, which are my nemesis—to keep a roof over their heads, heat their homes and feed their families.
People’s bills are intricately linked to Government policy, because the everyday costs people face are directly influenced by the choices Governments make. Therefore, the new clause is about understanding from the consumer’s perspective the impact of public policy on their pockets, particularly with regard to the most vulnerable, so that we can understand whether the choices we make in this House will have consequences well beyond the individual policy.
I will give the Committee an example of what we are concerned about. I would like to put on record my personal and ongoing admiration for the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who has done some sterling work on this issue. As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, I miss being in her presence and watching her pin down, with her laser-beam approach, permanent secretaries and members of various companies. The PAC has been looking at the impact of infrastructure investment on consumer bills, how the Government manage infrastructure investment and the consequences for consumers in the costs they are expected to bear.
The National Audit Office report was absolutely damning, stating:
“Government and regulators do not know by how much overall expected new investment by the private sector in infrastructure will increase household utility bills and whether bills will be affordable.”
Policy is being made that will have a substantial and severe consequence for people who are already struggling financially, yet no assessment is being made of the impact on people’s ability to pay—and therefore whether the policy itself is sustainable—or the wider consequences.
Members will know my concern about payday lending. We have 5 million people, and rising, in this country who are borrowing from payday loan companies in a way designed to lead them into debt, and the consequences of that are not simply about financial management. If a family have £10,000 to £15,000 of debt, it narrows their horizons. For example, they might never be able to send their children to university. They might never be able to get a mortgage to own their own home. They might struggle with social care costs. The consequences of those bills ripple out far beyond the individual loan, and far beyond concern about whether particular individuals can afford them. Given the consequences of Government decisions on household bills, it is important to have information about them to hand.
We might want to make changes that would have financial consequences for our constituents, but we should do that in a process of information and informed choices. In particular, we should understand the consequences for those who can least afford those changes. The Public Accounts Committee’s work in exploring the issue has thrown up some quite fascinating evidence, and I would like to mention some of that work. It took evidence last week from the Treasury, which, after all, we would expect to hold that sort of information. The Treasury acts on our behalf to gather details about this country’s finances and to understand the consequence of choices. It produces detailed analysis, for example, of the consequences of taxation, but it does not produce a detailed analysis of the consequences to the private consumer of any choice. There is a gap in our information and therefore our understanding of the consequences of decisions made by the House.
The Public Accounts Committee has, in particular, been looking at infrastructure investment and the consequences of decisions on the consumer. It has discovered huge financial issues for consumers as a result of energy infrastructure investment choices— ones that we are now seeking to recover from and which could be coming again. There were divisions among Government Members over some of the choices about renewable energy investment, and about what that might mean for consumers’ day-to-day bills compared with the long-term consequences for society of not investing.
More worryingly, the Public Accounts Committee also looked at the water industry. It made the shocking discovery that there is no assessment or test of whether water bills are affordable. Those of us who live in London are well aware of the choices being made by Thames Water, for example, about investment in the sewerage system and some substantial development projects. There is no understanding of whether those choices will have a consequence for consumers, who will not be able to pay that bill. The money that could go into that project and, indeed, the wider social consequences of people getting into debt trying to pay for water—after all, it is the most basic of human needs—are immense. The consequences for our society of people not being able to afford their bills, let alone having development that cannot be afforded, are substantial.
Members may say that we do not need the new clause, because after all this is the job of the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. One reason, however, for the National Audit Office flagging up the issue and for the sterling work of the Public Accounts Committee is to show that we need to understand decisions from the other side of the balance sheet. Their work shows that, as we said on Tuesday, we have to consider the public interest and the consumer interest. The two do not always fit together—though they are often complementary—and there are different consequences.
As a society, we will have to make many choices. Is it right for us to ask the public to bear the costs of such investments further down the line, and what are the consequences of that versus other forms of investment? Should we look to the industry or to the Government—we must consider how they manage their debts—to invest in something? Those are choices we will have to make as a society, but if we do not have the consumer perspective we cannot lay that alongside either the industry perspective or the Government perspective when making such decisions.
Agencies collate a huge amount of information about individual choices, such as the consequences of individual rises in energy bills, but there is no central repository or collective and cumulative database about what those consequences are. For example, Government Members—particularly Liberal Democrats—talk passionately about raising the tax threshold, but do not talk about the consequences of raising VAT, yet consumers would look at both issues. The new clause goes wider than individual infrastructure bills to say, “We need a better understanding from a consumer perspective of the choices Governments make and what they might mean for how far the pound in your pocket will stretch.” If we do not understand whether the public find our Government choices affordable, we will not understand the consequences of their being unaffordable for people.
We think the new clause should be supported by Members of all parties; after all, transparency is something we all aspire to. I have heard Members from both sides of the House wax lyrical about daylight being the best disinfectant and about understanding data.
 Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) indicated assent.

Stella Creasy: I see the hon. Gentleman nodding. Surely Government Members will support the new clause and the intention behind it, on the basis that it is about having information on the choices for our public to hand.

Stephen Doughty: My hon. Friend may not have noticed, but earlier today in the main Chamber my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) asked a very reasonable question regarding payday lending, gambling, the links between the two and their prevalence on the high street. The Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), gave an obfuscatory and quite confused answer. It is shocking that that sort of data and information are not available to show the impact that the interactions of those things has on people’s daily lives.

Stella Creasy: I am sure my hon. Friend is right. I am sorry I did not hear that question. I will look it up in Hansard. Our new colleague from Wythenshawe and Sale East is making a sterling impact in the House, just as he did in his local community. We are all delighted to see him here.
That point raises a broader issue. There is a perennial tension between the way different Departments investigate or interact with issues, yet consumers are hit from all sides. I do not think any Government of any colour have got the difference between running services and dealing with the impact on the public right. All Governments have talked about joining up services, but we have not necessarily talked about joining up outcomes. For example, we have not discussed the consequences of having consumer credit policy—and therefore the impact of payday lending—managed by one Department and gambling by another, and the two Departments’ interaction. At what point does somebody take responsibility? We can have as many sub-committees as we like within Government, but there is a fundamental question about who asks about the impact for the consumer. What is the consequence? If we were to look at a Venn diagram, who would be in the middle of it, paying a particular price?
The new clause asks us to bring that information together. We have talked about data while debating other clauses; we know a huge amount of data is out there. However, we need to look at things from the perspective of the consumer, particularly those who are not as well off as others and for whom affordability is a distinct and sharp concept. We could then better understand whether particular groups were persistently hit by changes in public policy. This is a question not just of whether policies are affordable in a narrow sense—whether people have enough money in their pockets—but of whether particular policies are affordable to our society in the broadest sense. The fact that the Government do not have that repository at this point means that our decision making is not fully informed.
I read carefully the Treasury’s critique of that notion—that it would be difficult to try to unpack, unpick and identify the impact of Government policy on household bills. Frankly, the Treasury is selling itself short on its capacity. I have huge admiration for the Treasury and the number crunching it does, and it is possible to start to bring together the different data sets that people have. After all, we have definitions of affordability in some sectors, but not in others. It is possible to start building those metrics. For example, we have seen some fantastic work in international development on pooling data sets and having the transparency that comes from understanding the impact on individuals when nations invest in other nations.
The framework to help us start pulling the information together is out there, but it takes political will to do that. The honest response is that some uncomfortable issues will be uncovered, and we will have to make some difficult choices. That does not mean that those choices should not be made, but simply that we should make them truly understanding their consequences for us. We know that about 15% of the total expenditure of low-income households goes on energy and water bills, while the rest of us spend about 8%. Therefore, we must surely understand that any changes in water and energy investment policy will have different consequences for different sectors of our society.
Research produced today by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism about the variations in payday lending across the country shows that it is concentrated in some parts of the countries and not in others. I am not proud to announce that I have 18 such companies in my local community—I am not sure whether anyone can beat me on that, but I do not want them to be able to. That means that, cumulatively, failing to act on payday lending has a disproportionate impact on communities with greater numbers of these firms.

Sheila Gilmore: I am sure my hon. Friend has also seen that some of the things she has talked about reproduce themselves in such circumstances. It is often the same—perhaps rather run-down—high streets where there is not only a plethora of different forms of short-term lending, but a growth in betting shops and other such things. Maybe the two just go together, but it is important to see how they join up.

Stella Creasy: I absolutely agree, and that joining-up is the consumer perspective. People in many of our constituencies will have seen at first hand the cumulative impact of Government policy over the past five or six years. In my community, a large number of people work in the public sector—or did work in it under the previous Government—and have faced the disproportionate impact of Government policy on their lives in the past couple of years. They have also seen the growth of payday lending and been hit incredibly hard by water bills. We now have a Mayor of London who is charging them £36 a week to get into central London. Cumulatively, those bills have been disastrous for their household finances. One bill is difficult, but there is a cumulative impact. It is only the consumers themselves who add it all up and find that there is too much month at the end of their money. Surely the Government should also know whether the public are struggling.

Oliver Colvile: May I first say what a pleasure it is to serve again under your chairmanship, Mr Amess?
Is the hon. Lady aware that the Labour-controlled city council in Plymouth decided to put up the council tax by 1.9%, despite the fact that there was no need to? That has had a devastating effect on a lot of families.

Stella Creasy: I know of the tireless work being done in Plymouth—the gentleman involved might even be standing against the hon. Gentleman at the next election—to tackle payday lending there. There is an understanding that people are struggling financially, and we have to understand the impact of choices on them.
Whether we agree with the choices being made, the point of this new clause is to take that wider consumer perspective and to understand the total consequences. I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that it is no good saying people will be given money back by raising a tax threshold, only then to take it away again in VAT increases. In my local community the bedroom tax has had huge financial consequences well beyond the individual policy or, indeed, any individual saving to my local authority’s housing benefit bill. It has had to deal with families made homeless, their social and emotional distress, and the poor financial management of the families involved. However, the consequences for the consumer have been immense.
All of us will want to make different choices about the public finances that reflect our different political ideological views—that is what politics is all about—but surely we should do it from an informed position. We do not have a repository of information in this place to help us understand the consequences for our constituents of pulling different levers in different Departments or at a local level, and that is surely a gap in our understanding. It might mean that we move a policy along and then find that it is unaffordable. That is what the National Audit Office is starting to uncover about some of the choices on infrastructure expenditure.
If the Minister is not minded to support the new clause, it would be helpful to understand what work she is doing to try to pull that information together. After all, championing the consumer is her role in the Government. It is a fantastic role, and I am privileged to shadow that work, but where is the repository of information? Where is the understanding of the cumulative impact of public policy on household bills? When she talks with her colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change about the interests of consumers, and when she presumably challenges her colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which does not have an affordability target for water bills—that is surely a central consumer concern—what information base is she using, and will she make it public?
Opposition Members know there is strong support out in the country for such measures. Consumer Futures is concerned about the lack of a central database and believes it should be possible to make the case to enable us to ask, how much is too much for consumers? What is affordable and what is not, and who will have to deal with the consequences? If the Minister is not minded to accept the new clause, will she say where that information is held? Do the Government intend to provide it? What is their vision for people understanding the consequences of public policy? Does she at least agree that we should know the price we are all paying, not just in our local communities but at a national level, for the choices made by the Government? I look forward to her response.

Jennifer Willott: Good morning, Mr Amess, on this lovely sunny morning.
The new clause would place an additional reporting requirement on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but the value of it is unclear. We consulted widely on the Bill, undertook the appropriate impact assessments and examined carefully the economic and wider impact on traders, consumers and public enforcers. As a result, we have been able to strengthen and clarify rights while removing burdens that are no longer valuable. On balance, the Bill is deregulatory.
I am sure we agree on the need for good scrutiny of policy changes and an appropriate impact assessment. The Government believe that that must be at the heart of policy formation. We are also committed to being the first Government in modern history to leave office having reduced rather than increased regulation. We have reduced the net annual burden of regulation on business by more than £1 billion to date. Of course, that is good for consumers as well—getting that balance right is extremely important. New policies have impact assessments that are subject to scrutiny by the Regulatory Policy Committee before coming to the House.
The Bill addresses a lot of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow. What can really throw low-income households is sudden, unexpected costs, such as a washing machine breaking down. That can throw a carefully balanced budget over the edge. The Bill increases the right for people to return or repair a product when it fails. That will provide a buffer against some of those costs and make a difference to low-income households.
The hon. Lady suggested that there are links between consumer rights policy and investment in infrastructure by utilities. The Public Accounts Committee has been working on that issue recently, as she highlighted. I reassure the Committee that the Government place strong emphasis on affordability analysis when developing the policy framework to be enforced by the independent regulators within our overall strategic objectives for sectors. However, there are inherent complications in attempting to aggregate the impact of utility prices on consumer bills, as they are often linked. For example, water is an energy-intensive industry, and changes in the price of electricity can have a significant effect on the operating costs of water companies. Affordability analysis is undertaken by all the economic regulators as a core part of their work. Ofcom, Ofwat, Ofgem, the Office of Rail Regulation and the Civil Aviation Authority all have a statutory duty to further or protect consumer interests.
The Government are taking action to help low-income households. Inflation in December was 1.9%, the lowest rate since November 2009. In April, the Government will increase the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000, which will take 2.7 million people out of tax altogether and save the typical taxpayer more than £700 a year. The change will cut income tax for people on the minimum wage by nearly two thirds and take a significant number of people out of paying income tax altogether.

Sheila Gilmore: Will the Minister not acknowledge that for many people on the lowest incomes, any gain from the rise in the tax threshold was more than wiped out by changes in benefits and tax credits, so they have not benefited?

Jennifer Willott: That is not quite right, because according to evidence given by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, this measure misses the effects of the tax and benefit changes and ignores those who are out of work. The amount of tax that people do not now have to pay is significant, particularly for those on lower incomes, and 2.7 million people pay no income tax at all.

Andrew McDonald: My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East mentioned the benefit changes. I recommend that she watch the BBC’s documentary with Theo Paphitis and Rachel Johnson, among others. They visited a man in London on £50 a week. He has to put £48 into his meter, leaving £2 a week to live on. How can we in this place not do our duty and protect those people infinitely better than we are doing? It is an absolute scandal that that is happening in our country.

Jennifer Willott: I have to confess I have not seen that documentary. The issues that the hon. Gentleman highlights are more properly ones for the Department for Work and Pensions, rather than the Consumer Rights Bill. I appreciate that the cost of daily items and energy bills has a significant impact on low-income households, which have far less margin for absorbing a rise in bills. However, the Government are taking action in various areas to try to improve the situation. We are reducing the impact of energy bills, which will save households £50 a year. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, we have helped local authorities in England to freeze council tax in every year of this Parliament, which could mean that council tax bills will have fallen by 12% in real terms by 2015-16.

Fiona O'Donnell: The Minister’s answer did not do justice to the suffering that so many consumers on prepayment meters are enduring. The Government are not taking action when more and more people are forced to use such an expensive way of connecting to the grid.

Jennifer Willott: I am not commenting on the rights and wrongs of prepayment meters. I appreciate that they can be significantly more expensive for some households than for those who are able to pay by direct debit, for example. The price difference is significant. However, we are discussing the Consumer Rights Bill. The issues that the hon. Members for East Lothian and for Middlesbrough have raised are unconnected to this legislation, and I am wary of straying outside the Bill’s scope, particularly given that we will shortly have another big debate that Members will be keen to participate in.
The Government are trying to assist with the cost of living. We are providing free school meals for all infant school children in reception and years 1 and 2, and we are introducing tax-free child care to support working families, with up to £1,200 per child per year available for families. The report proposed in the new clause would not identify the impact of any of those important policies and would seriously undermine their usefulness. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Walthamstow to withdraw the proposed new clause.

Stella Creasy: I thank the Minister for her response. All we are asking is to be able to understand in totality the consequences of Government policy for our constituents’ pockets. The passion that we have seen from my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough is one that we have all felt. We have all seen in our surgeries people who feel ashamed and embarrassed at having to ask for help because they simply cannot make ends meet. It is paramount that we understand the consequences for people of the choices we make in this House. The Minister suggests that all we can do for consumer rights is make sure that people can take back their washing machine when it breaks down, or get their money back. She does not understand that for most people, consumer rights is about the bills that come in every day—the red-letter bills that they know will go higher. We have known for years that energy prices in this country would rise, but the Minister dismisses the idea that that is a matter of consumer interest.
I want to tell the Minister clearly that there are not affordability targets across all the relevant sectors. If she had read the evidence that was given to the Public Accounts Committee last week, she would have found that DEFRA officials said clearly that
“there is no affordability target in the water sector.”
We do not know whether one of the key, basic red-letter bills that will be coming in is one that the public can afford.
Aside from that question, there is the simple question of whether enough money is coming into a household to cover all the bills—the basic cost of living. That issue is the reason people end up on our doorsteps in tears, embarrassed and ashamed, about to lose their homes, and seeing their families under pressure. All that we ask from the Government is the ability to pull together the information that we have, and understand the impact on consumers of the choices that are being made.
As I said to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, different Governments will make different choices, and that is understandable; but that is not the same as failing even to see that there is a consumer concern, and dismissing the issues as matters for other Departments. They are not just “matters for other Departments” for the people we represent, whom we see every day in financial distress.
Those people are consumers. We should speak up for their interests when it is suggested that a Consumer Rights Bill should not address whether they should be ripped off by the Government and pay a cost they cannot afford, and that the Government should have no information on that.

Brooks Newmark: On a point of order, Mr Amess. I do not want to tell you what your job is, and I appreciate the impassioned speech that the hon. Lady is making, but I do not think it has anything to do with the Bill, notwithstanding her logic or argument. I am not faulting her on those things; but what she is saying has nothing to do with the Bill.

David Amess: Order. This is the last day of the Committee’s proceedings, and we have debated matters in a civilised fashion. It would be a shame if things soured on the last day. I have taken careful note of the point of order, and was deliberating with the Clerk whether the hon. Lady was perhaps going a little too wide in her remarks. I wonder if she would now draw them closely to the new clause.

Stella Creasy: I was intending to draw my remarks to a close, Mr Amess. I simply want to say that the Bill clearly sets out the public’s right to a fair price—there is a clause on the fair price issue—and surely that includes the cost of services they are provided with.
Household bills and the quality of service provided will be covered under the Bill. Therefore, the hon. Member for Braintree should look again at the Bill and ask himself whether the consequences of choices that affect bills in a relevant sector contribute to an understanding of whether the price is fair. We think so; we think consumers have a right to the information.
Given that there is such a division on the matter, I want to withdraw the new clause, because we should test the question further and enable the whole House to decide whether it is in consumers’ interests to know the cost of Government. I wager that there will be bigger disagreement on it than people might think.
There are national organisations concerned about transparency in decision making on behalf of consumers that take a stronger view about being a consumer champion, and I think they would disagree with the lax line taken by the Government this morning on whether affordability should be considered a consumer issue. With that in mind, and on the basis that the whole House should participate in a discussion that we consider vital, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 9  - Annual report: public services

‘(1) Within three months of Royal Assent of this Act the Secretary of State must publish a report detailing how—
(a) better outcomes for consumers of public services; and
(b) more efficient decision-making processes
will be ensured.
(2) For the purposes of this Act a public service is any provided to the consumer directly by—
(a) a Government department;
(b) a local or public authority; or
(c) a trader acting on behalf of these organisations.
(3) For the purposes of this Act a person shall be a consumer of public services under a “direct commissioning contract” when they enter any—
(a) agreement;
(b) contract;
(c) consumer notice; or
(d) proposed contract,
for receiving a service which the person has a direct role in commissioning.
(4) A report under subsection (1) will consider—
(a) how each public service provider will ensure a formalised approach to ensure independent advocacy is available for consumers at an early stage in the decision-making process for the provision of public services;
(b) the nature of an independent advocate to participate in this process, and the definition of independence, including how this could be supported by the conduct of any service provider;
(c) the effect of a breach in a consumer’s statutory rights as set out by this Act when a direct commissioning contract is in place;
(d) what formal status any independent advice provided notice issued will have in relation to local authority decision-making, in particular, in instances where a public service continues to act contrary to such information and formal legal redress is sought;
(e) the role of the public sector ombudsman services in overseeing any such approach under paragraph (a); and
(f) how a public service provider will report on their formalised approach under paragraph (a).’.—(Stella Creasy.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Stella Creasy: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I fear that coalition Members may again seek to close down debate; there was a substantial revelation last week in Committee, which we believe has huge implications for all our constituents, about the role and reach of the Bill in the public sector. The Minister tried valiantly—I give her credit for that—to say that the Bill did not cover that sector. Those of us who had seen that clause 2 specifies that traders in the public sector could be included were therefore curious. We have sought to understand the consequences.
We heard the revelation last Thursday, when we talked about the importance of people being able to access service information. We now understand that this legislation will cover a whole range of services in the public sector. There are huge questions to be asked about what that means for the way in which the services are delivered and, from our perspective, about how we ensure that that is done in a progressive and egalitarian way.
I see that the hon. Member for Wycombe might already be piqued by my using the term “egalitarian”. Let me explain to him what I mean. I am thinking of the sharp elbows phenomenon. All of us know of, in our constituencies, variation in public service delivery—variation in people’s experiences of the direct contracts that the Minister said last Thursday would be covered by this legislation. Which of us has not dealt with someone who has had problems with a personal care budget, with the Student Loans Company or with their university? Which of us has not dealt with people concerned about the provision of child care in their local community?
I am also very interested, having listened to and reflected on what the Minister said about direct contracts and having had a long and interesting discussion with someone on whether this was a Hobbesian moment about the contract between state and citizen, in whether we will get on to the broader concept of what a contract is and therefore the broader scope of what services are covered by this legislation. There is certainly a list of particular types of services.
For example, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport was very concerned about the lift in the building that his social tenants were dealing with. The rent agreement might be part of sector-specific legislation, but is the provision of a lift and the quality of the environment—the service charges that an individual would be paying through their rent—part of a contract that would be covered by this legislation? That would be an interesting question for us. If someone makes a payment in relation to a controlled parking zone in their local community, is that a direct contract between them and a local agency that is therefore covered by this legislation?
What we all do know, though, is that people with sharp elbows—those who shout the loudest or are the most persistent in complaining—are able to secure better outcomes. That is a source of inequality, because it does not necessarily mean that services are designed around need; they are designed around want. All of us, I am sure, would want services to be the most efficient and effective metric of need, reaching people and responding to their concerns about being able to receive services of a suitable quality.
That this legislation even brings just those services into its scope raises huge questions for all of us about how people will be able to exercise the rights accorded to them under this legislation. I am referring to the right to a satisfactory service, at a fair price, in a reasonable time. That means that we need to have a way of understanding where influence will be brought to bear—how we deal with the sharp elbows effect—because necessarily, relationships in the public sector are different from those in the private sector. It is a relational rather than a transactional framework that we need to deal with.
Opposition Members want to put ourselves firmly on the side of users of public services, firmly on the side of the person trying to get the best deal, so that they can get the best out of public services, because we recognise that there is a benefit to all of us when that happens. When our young people get a good-quality education, they will contribute back to our economy. They will be much more likely to get a job and to pay their taxes, and we will be much more likely to benefit from the impact of their education. It is therefore vital that we get these issues right.
That there are such discrepancies in people’s ability to complain and seek redress—to put things right—is something that all of us know, because, as I said in the previous sitting, if we were to get this legislation right, two thirds of our casework would disappear. That is because we become the sharp elbows for people at various points.
The aim of the new clause is to get the Government to think about and deal with the consequences for the public sector of this legislation in a way that will promote equality and progressive outcomes, in a way that will tackle the issue of sharp elbows. We must ensure, as we extend people’s rights—we think that that is a positive and healthy thing to do, because we think that people have rights in the public sector—that we do so in a way that does not lead to more inequality and a worsening service.
In particular, Opposition Members understand that simply asking people to make choices is not enough. We understand that people need someone to work with them, that advocacy is a crucial part of empowerment. It is not enough for people to be able to access information—our previous amendments were about encouraging the Government to ensure that people did that—it is also important to have someone working alongside them.
All of us will know the benefit of good advice, especially early on. The critical point in this context is that good advice saves the taxpayer money, improves the experience for the consumer and therefore benefits the service. All the evidence and research shows that where third-party advocacy services are brought in at an early stage to help provide challenge, scrutiny and support to users in public services, we get a better deal.
What does that mean in practice? It means that, where, for example, citizens advice bureaux work with people who have personal care budgets to navigate and negotiate the kind of service they are getting and deal with any concerns they might have, to ensure that the law is being applied appropriately and that decisions are made in the interests of the user, money and time are saved, and the service is improved.
Regarding students, it is clear that a good student experience is about not just the individual relationship between the student and the tutor, but the quality of the education provided. We have already seen, at the national level, concerns about the contract between the student and the university and how it is managed. As the Bill will cover that issue, it seems important to ask how students will actualise those details. I say that bearing in mind that there are already systems of redress in higher education. However, students have had a mixed experience with those, particularly on the question of whether they have had a satisfactory service and a right to service performance.
Issues have arisen relating to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, such as how complaints are handled and the possible consequences for students. Let us be clear what those consequences are: if a course is taught badly and the university is not able to provide the support and structure to allow a student to achieve a degree, that will mar the rest of that student’s life—a huge impact resulting from poor service provision. Equally, if a student seeks to evade their own responsibilities to undertake the study and to be part of the university, we need a process to resolve that, because the claim is vexatious for universities.
The Bill will give students a right to a repeat performance or a price reduction, but no university is set up to deal with that at the moment. A number of universities have not even signed up to the OIAHE, and some are not even using the current system under which they are supposed to provide completion of procedures letters to inform students of their rights.
By extending the Bill to the public sector, the Government are opening a veritable Pandora’s box. If we get it wrong, we could leave even more students and personal care budget owners who do not have the requisite confidence, skills, information and awareness of their rights without redress, while leaving those who have sharp elbows and are able to demand their rights under the Bill with more opportunity for redress, which may not necessarily be clear to the universities.
We cannot let the Bill as it relates to the public sector to pass through Parliament unscrutinised. We cannot simply hope that people will understand the Government’s intention in including public services in the Bill. We need a clearer framework to ensure that people get access to advocacy at an early stage. That is in the public’s interest in terms of the cost of service provision, and in the consumer’s interest when it comes to good decision making.
It is a question of having a separate process, just as in the private sector, whereby there is the ombudsman and the internal complaints process of the company in question. If someone is sold that sofa with the terrible scatter cushions, there is an expectation that they will go to the shop to resolve the issue, but they will have rights and a framework under which to negotiate a resolution. However, if that does not work out, they can, according our conversation on Tuesday, go to an ombudsman.
Given that the Bill extends those principles to the public sector, we need to have a progressive way of resolving such matters. Our approach to the advocacy issue sets out that it is important to have organisations that can bridge the gap between consumers and their understanding and awareness of how services are run, to ensure that good decisions are made.
As MPs, we have all been advocates at various times. I wager that we have all seen examples of bad decision making, such as a local authority pressing ahead, despite being told that its decision on a homelessness application was contrary to the law, thereby triggering a judicial review. All of us know the financial penalties to the public purse of bad decision making, but the issue is the consequences for the consumer.

Brooks Newmark: I am struggling to find the logic in the hon. Lady’s argument. I have come across the same frustrations that she has found, particularly with local government services, and I would agree with her on the housing issue. However, every time I have come across that frustration, authorities have come back to me, saying, “This is what the letter of the law says.” Surely the question is not one of advocacy; rather, if we feel that the way the law is being implemented is wrong, we should go back to the root cause—the law itself—and try to change that, rather than trying to challenge through advocacy, at least in the particular examples the hon. Lady gave.

Stella Creasy: I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman, partly because that would be saying to the person at the heart of the issue, “There is nothing we can do for you here. The decision has been made, even though the way in which the local authority interpreted the law is contrary to the law.” I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is trying to engage in the debate, but saying to people that all we need to do is change the law next time belies the difficulties of implementation. The new clause tries to address the difference between the policy set in Whitehall and the reality on the ground. All of us here who have worked in local government will have seen the difference in the way in which such issues are interpreted.
I will provide some examples of where advocacy has made a difference, particularly in relation to local advice services. A study in Nottingham in 2009 found that 40% of cases dealt with by local advice services were about poor decision making in public sector agencies—what was called “preventable failure in the system”.
From a purely value-for-money point of view, those issues are being dealt with badly, in that money and time are being used to put things right. However, from a consumer perspective—the people who are at the heart of the matter—it is their lives that are being affected. Those are people being made homeless, put into debt or denied the services they require.
It would be interesting to hear whether the Minister believes that, for example, a special educational needs statement is a contract within the Bill’s definition; it is, after all, a direct commissioning contract. If a child is given the wrong statement, there are not only financial consequences for the state in putting that right, but huge consequences for the child, whose development is delayed. If such a statement is considered a contract, that will constitute a consumer interest within the scope of the Bill.
The Minister can claim as much as she likes that there are statutory obligations, but given that the Bill specifically covers traders in the public sector, she must set out where she draws the line. Opposition Members want people to have as many rights as possible, so that such decisions can be got right early on, but we do not yet have the necessary infrastructure. That is what advocacy offers us.

Brooks Newmark: Unfortunately, the hon. Lady has slightly moved the goalposts again. I have dealt with similar cases; we all have. For example, if a constituent claiming disability benefits visits an MP, we can tell clearly that there is something wrong with them, yet somehow they are being shafted by the system—I am not sure whether that term is within “Erskine May”. It makes me absolutely apoplectic when I can see something is wrong, but then a doctor’s report says something slightly to the contrary and DWP uses it to say, “I am sorry—”.
There is the weakness of human error and human judgment, and even doctors are not perfect. I understand where the hon. Lady is trying to go, but I am not sure how we can bind that in legislation, so that when we see it on a piece of paper, we can implement it. I think part of what she is saying relies on a certain amount of judgment—by planners, doctors and a whole variety of people, each of whom are different and may look at a similar case but make a different judgment.

Stella Creasy: I do not disagree that there are issues relating to judgment. No one is suggesting that we should always critique the judgment of experts. What we are looking at is a public sector that can become advocates for the services that people want. The question of judgment is precisely what we need to get right. The new clause says that what we need are people who can help others navigate the system.
Let me put the issue the other way round. I am sure the hon. Gentleman has seen decisions that are contrary to the law. Let me be clear: the issue is not about changing the law, but about how the law is implemented. After all, that is why his constituent wrote to him—to challenge a decision and ask, “Is this fair? Is it right that I am being made homeless?” One will look at such cases and say, “Under the current legislation, this is not the right decision.” When someone makes that point and it is ignored, should there not be some kind of consequence, just as there is in the private sector?
Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman the parallel framework within the private sector, which the Bill covers. Let us return to the complaint about the scatter cushions. They are not right, so my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian goes to the ombudsman, who says to the furniture maker, “You were told that you had got it wrong; we are telling you that you got it wrong, so there should be redress”. Therefore, she should get her new scatter cushions, but still the furniture maker says, “I don’t care. Sue me.” So she then continues in order to get legal redress. The courts would be able to say, “Hang on a minute. An ombudsman was involved and said that you made the wrong decision.” An independent third party has clarified the position.

Brooks Newmark: The hon. Lady is moving the goalposts again.

Stella Creasy: I genuinely do not think I am. The number of appeals that are won where citizens advice bureaux have said that a wrong decision was reached tells us that decision making is not always perfect. We could have an early intervention system, with users going to a third-party advocate: a citizens advice bureau, their MP or a specialist agency. We used to have a system for special educational needs, whereby parent advisory services would say that a parent had the right to request a particular outcome. If a local authority continues to ignore a decision, surely there should be consequences. What is happening is not only bad for the consumer; it is bad for the state and for the relationship of trust.
If we are going to open up public services to rights, we need to make sure that we have parallel systems of redress. When it comes to the cost to the public purse, it is in all our interests to have redress at an early stage and to have the positive effects of scrutiny that come from third party advocates getting the citizens advice bureau to look at a decision and say that it is not right and does not meet the requirements of the law. I cannot believe that members of the Committee have not had cases where the decisions taken did not match the requirements of the law. We can challenge them, but our influence has no formal status. We are saying that, just as if someone went to an ombudsman and their ruling—“This decision hasn’t been made appropriately; you have a complaint that should be upheld”—was ignored, there should be legal consequences.
According to research published today by Which?, complaints within the public sector are a source of vexation for people. Two in five people do not report their complaints, so we are not getting the information on where our public services are getting things wrong for consumers, and therefore we cannot put them right. This shows how important it is that we get the infrastructure right. The Bill provides ways in which that could be achieved, but there has been no testing and no systems have been put in place. There is a very real risk that it will be a question of rights for some.
Some people will know their rights regarding satisfactory performance, and will be able to go to the student body, for example, and say, “I have paid my tuition fees; I have a contract with you; I am not convinced there has been a satisfactory performance. I would therefore like a price reduction. Here is how I envisage my rights.” However, there will be no process for resolving that situation. It would be interesting to know whether this wonderful implementation group is going to issue guidance.
I have a fear, which the Minister might confirm. Given that we have opened this Pandora’s box and said, “Hang on a minute; this is going to affect public services”, are the Government going to use the powers in the Bill to exclude certain services? Instead of getting this right, are we going to see the rights that have been tantalisingly offered to our constituents in respect of public services they have a direct contract with cruelly snatched away by a Government using their power to exclude certain services? Our new clause would establish an independent advocate who could say, “You’ve got a case. You are being made homeless, and this is not the right decision”; or, “This is the right decision under the law. You might not like it, but the council have applied the law correctly. I am an independent advocate. I act on nobody’s behalf but yours, and I can tell you that that decision has been made correctly.” We surely need to get such a process in place.
Denying people rights will lead to further inequality, but applying them in a poor way will not help, either. The new clause addresses the things we need to get right in a relational contract. It would provide the kinds of redress and early intervention that all of us want, and that would save money, secure better outcomes and put the rights of the user at the heart of our public services.
I hope the hon. Member for Braintree agrees that we should at least put users and their experiences at the heart of public services. If so, he needs to tell me how he sees them using the satisfactory, fit for purpose test in the legislation. I will happily give way to him if he has an idea.

Brooks Newmark: I have to say, I have enjoyed this Committee immensely. I know it is the last day. The hon. Lady comes across as unbelievably reasonable in the way she delivers her argument. She thinks that just because she delivers it in a soft, reasonable way that it is the right way to go about things. I am highly sympathetic to what she has said and the frustrations that she has outlined, and, indeed, to what the hon. Member for Middlesbrough has said. It is immensely frustrating to many of us who try to be advocates on behalf of our constituents to see poor public services and our constituents somehow being screwed by one department or another.
I have listened to the hon. Lady carefully, particularly on students’ rights, and unfortunately her new clause is somewhat opaque and comes down to a question of judgment. This is not something that we can write into law to get a third party to adjudicate on. It is a much tougher problem, and we would end up making judgments. That is unlike the recent example, provided by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, of the person who says, “If a lift in a council house is not working, why should I pay all my tax?”
 Oliver Colvile  rose—

David Amess: Order. I am confused as to whether this is an intervention or a speech. I have the hon. Member for Portsmouth trying to intervene on an intervention. I ask Mr Newmark to draw his intervention to a conclusion.

Oliver Colvile: On a point of order, Mr Amess. May I point out that I am the Member of Parliament not for Portsmouth, but for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport? We are not Portsmouth, and we are not 20 minutes away from Bristol.

David Amess: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman.

Brooks Newmark: My apologies to my hon. Friend, too.
My point is that there is a difference between the opaqueness of judgment that the hon. Member for Walthamstow suggests a third party must make a judgment call on and the example provided by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport a couple of a days ago, where perhaps there is a distinct service that one can see is not being delivered, such as a malfunctioning lift in a council house, for which someone should have redress.

Stella Creasy: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because he is demonstrating the exact problem that we have. There is a direct connection. The Bill covers the relationship between a student and their higher education institution. We want to know whether it covers, not necessarily the rent for example, but the service charges that some might have for a lift.
From what the Minister has admitted, we know that the Bill will cover personal care budgets. Let us consider the reality of what that means. Research done by Which? demonstrates that people are less likely to complain about social care services out of fear that the service will deteriorate or that they will be punished. We are talking about some incredibly vulnerable people in our communities. The Bill will, in theory, give rights to them, and yet they are frightened because we are asking them to exercise those rights on their own. We do not think that that is fair. That is where sharp elbows come into play. If we want to be advocates for service users, we should stand alongside and help them. An independent third party can help them exercise their rights at an early stage in the process to get a better decision.
The hon. Gentleman will have seen in his constituency, as I have in mine, vulnerable people who have been given a poor level of service in personal care. He will raise concerns with social services, who will simply say, “Them’s your apples.” He will feel the frustration and anger and say, “Surely we should be able to put that right.” That the hon. Gentleman’s direct intervention as an MP has no status—let alone the intervention of an independent expert from a citizens advice bureau or a patient advocacy body—tells us everything we need to know about whether the rights can be realised. It tells us about the need to ensure that, when an independent advocate looks at the merits of a case and says, “This is not an intervention that fits in law, so the consumer—the citizen at the heart of the relationship—has a right of redress”, it will mean something.
I do not want to live in a society where the elderly and vulnerable are getting a poor service from their personal care budgets but are too frightened to speak up. Surely we should be on the side of those people, helping them to get a fair deal and ensuring that when we stand with them. Surely, when we say, “This is a poor-quality service you are paying for: 15 minutes for someone to come in and get you dressed, but they do not even turn up”, it should mean something. Right now, it is not clear that it does. Surely, empowerment is about not just information but advocacy. Standing with people is what progressive politics is about.
The hon. Member for Braintree is a progressive at heart, if not in his soul, so he will understand the point that we are making with the new clause. Whether or not he agrees with the framework that we have suggested, the Bill will cover all those issues, as the Minister confirmed last Thursday.
The issue that we must deal with is that the Bill includes no parallel process for the public sector and does not tell us how people will realise their rights in it. We want to know whether the Minister will exclude public services by using the arbitrary right in the Bill. We want to know how she expects students to be able to speak up and say, “Actually, I am not getting a good deal from the university that I am paying for.” We want to know what people will be able to do if their controlled parking zone is not fit for purpose. All those contracts are covered by the Bill, and those issues must be resolved, so the House must be able to debate and discuss their impact. A failure to do so will create a series of complications at national level.
I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope she will engage in the debate fairly. We all know how frustrating it is when services go wrong, so we all want them to work. We do not simply want to reduce our casework; we genuinely want to ensure that users get the best out of public services. Surely that is a consumer right to be proud of.

Jennifer Willott: A lot of what the hon. Lady said does not fall under the remit of the Bill; she significantly overstated its role. It is a little unfair to say that the public service sector does not have routes for people to complain or routes of redress for people who receive unsatisfactory service. As she said, we all represent different constituencies and communities, and people come to us with issues about the delivery of public services. Hon. Members who have been in this House for significantly longer than she or I will have dealt with a huge number of issues over the years. There are routes to redress in the public services, and the Government are doing what they can to improve them.
The new clause raises a number of issues about the provision of public services, including outcomes to be achieved, consumer rights and redress, advocacy for consumers and reporting requirements for service providers. I will go through those issues in turn.
In 2011, the Government published their plans for ensuring better outcomes for individuals and communities who use public services in the “Open Public Services” White Paper. Detailed progress against the Government’s open public services commitments is reported annually, and the 2014 publication is due shortly. The White Paper set out why and how the Government were reforming public services. In particular, it said that we would move away from the culture of “Whitehall knows best”, top-down prescription and centralisation, which were features of the previous Government’s delivery of public services and resulted in highly trained professionals being persistently second-guessed.
The Government are trying to shift power down to people to ensure that they have the best possible services for the money that is spent and that services are delivered. For example, we are giving parents and pupils a more open choice of schools, making school funding follow those choices and giving teachers more freedom and the opportunity to take on more responsibility.
Following a consultation by the Department of Health, people who receive NHS continuing health care will have the right to request a personal health budget, including a direct payment. Police forces now have to hold regular neighbourhood beat meetings so that residents can challenge them on the service they provide, using publicly available data on local patterns of crime. The Government are driving fundamental reforms to make services responsive to those whom they serve, and we are reporting against our White Paper commitments. It is therefore not appropriate to add new reporting requirements to the Bill.
There are, of course, already important channels for redress and advocacy in the provision of public services, contrary to the impression that the hon. Lady gave. For example, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, the local government ombudsman and the housing ombudsman play an important role as the final arbiters of complaints about care, treatment or choice in public services. However, we believe that we can go further to innovate and drive improvement. Last October, the Minister for Government Policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), announced his intention to build on the learning that came out of the recent Francis report and highlighted his ambition to undertake two further pieces of work this year to improve public service complaint handling. The first review will investigate how public services can make best use of complaints, and ensure that complaints are welcomed as a valuable source of information on where improvements in public service delivery are required. The second review will take a wider look at the role and powers of the public sector ombudsmen, and will consider the case for a single public sector ombudsman. The ombudsmen’s role is important, but the Bill should not place new roles on them or on the wider landscape, particularly given the review I have mentioned.
I appreciate that it is important that people have access to a source of advice and advocacy. As the hon. Lady said, as constituency MPs we often provide that role, but a number of organisations do so. However, rather than strengthening that role, the new clause would confuse the landscape. Citizens Advice already provides an advice and advocacy service that spans public and private provision of services. It offers a central source of advice, and signposts people to other sources of help. Of course, sometimes, more intensive support is needed. For example, the Patient Advice and Liaison Service offers confidential advice, support and information on health-related matters. However, what we must not do is confuse the landscape so that people do not know where to go. It is important that Citizens Advice remain the central point of contact and be able to refer people on to other sources of help where necessary. Requiring new bodies—or at least, new roles for existing bodies—would hinder rather than help our reforms to make services more responsive to end users, and risks creating more bureaucracy.
The proposed new clause contains a requirement on service providers to report on their “formalised approach” to advocacy. That is neither necessary nor cost effective. First, the advocacy support that the Government provide is already closely monitored. The annual grant agreement letter from BIS to Citizens Advice sets out the terms under which the grant is provided, and reporting requirements. There is an agreed set of key performance indicators against which delivery is assessed.
Although, as we recognise from our experience as constituency MPs, this is an extremely important issue to many people, the Bill is not the place for this debate. I am not alone in believing that. Those who gave oral evidence to the Committee unanimously thought that setting out public service rights and redress in the Bill would be unhelpful. For example, Citizens Advice said:
“There are other ways of dealing with public sector services problems than a consumer rights Bill.”––[Official Report, Consumer Rights Public Bill Committee, 11 February 2014; c. 7, Q6.]
Which? said:
“there are so many things that could fall within the scope of the Bill or could be added to it, and it could become unwieldy.”––[Official Report, Consumer Rights Public Bill Committee, 11 February 2014; c. 7, Q6.]
The OFT said:
“I do not think that going into that area in this Bill would add any particular value, because what the Bill is trying to achieve is already extremely ambitious.”––[Official Report, Consumer Rights Public Bill Committee, 11 February 2014; c. 49, Q96.]
As we have discussed already, it is the nature of the contract that determines whether service delivery is covered by the Bill. Many public services are delivered under licence or statute, rather than under a contract. I wrote to the Committee in February following the oral evidence sessions to explain the definition and clarify what the Bill covers in terms of public services. Where services are delivered under a contract with a trader, consumers will have rights under the Bill, including the right to redress and the ability to pursue complaints through the same routes.
The hon. Lady suggested that the Government are going to exclude public services from the remit of the Bill. We discussed this the other day and I highlighted what the Government intend to exclude from the Bill. The exclusion relates to rail passengers, because we feel that the conditions of carriage provide better and more comprehensive coverage than rights under this Bill. We have no plans to exclude any other public services from that part of the Bill, so the hon. Lady is wrong to suggest that.
On the advocacy available for people with personal care budgets, which the hon. Lady raised a couple of times, the Care Bill currently before Parliament introduces a new duty on local authorities to provide an independent advocate for the people we think need it most, particularly those who would experience substantial difficulty in understanding the processes that are in place or the information relevant to them, and in communicating their views. As she highlighted, that is particularly a problem for those who are accessing personal care budgets, which is why we are ensuring that that provision is provided in the Care Bill.
In most cases, public services are delivered by licence or statute and are not covered by this Bill. I hope I have clarified that there are well established and well used alternative routes for patients and consumers of public services to be able to access support, advocacy and assistance. I therefore ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clause.

Stella Creasy: I thank the Minister for her response. We all agree that advocacy is important, and it is welcome that the Government are committed to the principles behind the new clause. When someone asks for help from an expert or somebody who has knowledge about a particular service, and that expert identifies a challenge in how a service is being delivered, that should mean something. The question for all of us is what happens to that information, and that is what the new clause is about. The Minister has not addressed the fact that time and time again an MP, a citizens advice bureau or PALS will say, “This decision has not been made well”, but the agency in question continues to ignore the advice.
I note that the Minister mentioned PALS. We know that there are already advocacy organisations in the health care system, but they do not have any teeth. That is the brutal reality. It is a process of attrition, rather than resolution. Anybody who has dealt with PALS or Healthwatch, or gone through a complaints process, knows that they might get a “sorry”, but they do not necessarily get redress.
 Oliver Colvile  rose—

Stella Creasy: May I just explain my point? I am conscious of time.
The Bill will give people direct powers of redress and direct rights. I note from the letter that the Minister wrote to us in February that she was not sure whether the Bill covered personal care budgets, but she said last Thursday that it did, in the same way that it covers tuition fees. She has not answered the question about service contracts as opposed to rental contracts, nor the question about a controlled parking zone, but she did say that child care vouchers were covered, so once someone is using that form of payment, they will be able to use the rights in the Bill.
The Minister simply says there are other forms of redress available, without understanding that the implications for PALS or Healthwatch and for users of those rights will be immense. What does it mean to have a satisfactory level of performance? What are our rights to a reasonable price, and what is a fair time scale? Those are rights under the Bill. We cannot simply let those rights go through and then hope that advocates will be able to find a way of muddling through. We need greater clarity about those rights and who will be able to help us exercise them. Right now, many of the advocates within our public services do not have a clear status. They can be ignored or they can be listened to. That creates inequality, let alone the inequality of whether people are able to access advocacy.
I simply do not agree with the Minister that there is clarity about advocacy, and I say that as somebody who has no independent housing advice service in their local community. People do not trust the decisions made by my local housing authority, because they do not believe it is acting in their interests, which means that I do a lot of housing casework. There is no clarity and consistency on advocacy in a range of the public services around the country that will be covered by the Bill.
The Minister wrote to us saying that the public sector was not covered by the Bill, but she then admitted on Thursday that substantial services are included. She said that we were going beyond the scope of the Bill, but we do not know whether that is true. She is unleashing a consumer revolution in public services—we would welcome that, but we want to make sure it works for everyone. That is where advocacy comes in.
I was pleased to hear the Minister commit not to use the powers in the Bill to exclude certain services, but that brings me back to a question I asked earlier. If students have a right to a satisfactory service, and therefore the remedy of a price reduction, what will that mean in practice? What advice will we give students on their relationship with their university? If they are paying a tuition fee, they have a direct contract—the Minister admitted it. We need to understand the proposals in the Bill while they are before the House, because we need to understand what the consequences for our higher education sector and our social care sector will be.
We simply cannot accept the Minister’s assurances that all is fine, that everything will carry on and that it is business as usual. Given the problems that many of our constituents already face, which the rights and advocacy that we want could help to redress, surely this is an opportunity to get public service reform right.
This is a substantial issue of such importance that, as with new clause 8, the whole House should have an opportunity to comment on it, discuss it, debate it and truly understand it. When residents come to us in future, we should be able to say to them, “Ah, you’ve got a personal care budget. Well, you have rights under the Consumer Rights Bill. Let me tell you what those rights are”. Let us hope that the implementation group will give advice to MPs, which they can then give to constituents who come to them.

Mark Durkan: If my hon. Friend hopes to give the House a chance to look at these issues at further stages of the Bill, will that include giving people a choice about how they make or receive payments in respect of public services? Benefits have been mentioned, but there are other payments that people make. Will a choice of going to the post office still be available? That would protect consumer choice in general and would also be consistent with the Minister’s other responsibilities in respect of the post office network.

Stella Creasy: My honest answer is that I simply do not know. That is the point—we do not know. As we have considered the Bill, the Minister’s assurances in her letter of 12 February have proved to be not necessarily as robust as she would like. A number of public services will be directly covered by the Bill, so we will probably need legal advice on points such as my hon. Friend raises. The Committee has not had that advice.
With the new clause, we are demanding answers about what the Bill will mean for our constituents who are consumers of public services. The Minister’s point about services being delivered under statute or licence, and the consumer therefore being denuded of rights, seems worrying. I do not want to say to my constituents, “Ah, here you have no rights. There is nothing you can do, even though you might be paying for these services through your taxes.”

Jennifer Willott: May I ask whether the hon. Lady actually listened to my speech? Clearly, the whole of what I said was about the routes that are available to people who access public services. No Government have ever suggested that there should be no rights of redress to people accessing public services delivered under statute or under licence.

Stella Creasy: I really hoped that the Minister would listen to what I was trying to say. Because she has opened up the Bill to elements of the public sector, she has opened up differences in how people will be able to access their rights. It is fair to say that students paying a tuition fee will have different rights, for example, from students in a secondary school under the division that the Minister has made. Students paying a tuition fee have a direct contract, ergo they will have rights under the Bill that will be different from the rights that a student in a secondary school will have if they have concerns about the quality of their teaching.
The Minister dismisses that argument and says, “It does not matter, there are already suitable routes of redress”, but the rights are changing under the Bill, ergo the redress will be different. We have to understand how such issues will interact. The Minister has tried to avoid that debate for the entirety of the proceedings on the Bill, and we have had to pin her down through our new clauses and ask, “What does this mean for the public sector?” She tried to say to the Committee on 12 February that she was not sure whether the Bill covered public services in the case of personal care budgets, then had to admit last week that it does. That means that all of us dealing with somebody with a personal care budget will need to advise them that they have different rights from those that they would have if they were just using a general day service, for example. That is a huge change for our constituents.
I did not go into politics to do services on behalf of people; I wanted to work with people. That means that their rights come into play. There is clearly a strong difference between the Government and the Opposition on that, and that is why I think it is right that the whole House has an opportunity to consider the matter and its consequences. I am pleased to hear the Minister say that she will not exclude services, but that means we have to get it right. With that in mind, I will withdraw the clause, so that we can all return to the matter on Report. I wager that even if the Minister does not think it is important, a number of Members throughout the House will. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Jennifer Willott: On a point of order, Mr Amess. I am sure we all agree that the Committee has scrutinised the Bill thoroughly, and I thank Members for the constructive and occasionally entertaining way in which they have engaged in the debate. I am pleased that we have completed proceedings in the allotted time—in fact, we have time to spare. We have a whole session left, because we managed to make such good progress.
May I thank the Government and Opposition Whips who have ensured that the Committee ran smoothly and effectively? We have had helpful and constructive consideration of the Bill, and the debate has been splendidly conducted under you, Mr Amess, and Mrs Osborne in the Chair. I am grateful to both of you for the guidance you have given us throughout our deliberations, including on the consumption of beverages in the Committee Room.
I also pay tribute to the usual channels for their help and guidance throughout. I also recognise the hard work of Hansard in recording everything so accurately. We have used the records of Hansard on a number of occasions throughout the Committee’s deliberations, so it has proved important to us all. I also thank the Clerks for their advice and the Doorkeepers for keeping good order, though I do not think that has been too challenging. I also thank the officials for their superb support throughout.

Stella Creasy: Further to that point of order, Mr Amess. I echo the Minister’s comments about the support that we have had in running the Committee. She is absolutely right. One reason we have been able to finish early is because we have had such professional support. I want to put on record my personal thanks to the Clerks for their assistance in understanding the process to enable us to bring forward debates on the concerns that we had.
I also want to thank the Chairs—you, Mr Amess, and Mrs Osborne. You have been fantastic in keeping us all in order, sometimes against our better judgment. I want to thank the Doorkeepers, and the Hansard reporters. I agree with the Minister that we have all paid careful and close attention to the way in which they have transcribed our proceedings.
I also thank all members of the Committee. We have enjoyed the process of debating issues that show clear divisions and distinctions between the two political parties represented here—sorry, three political parties. [Hon. Members: “Four!]. Members might not know who I was referring to when I said three.
We certainly think we have paid the Bill a good level of attention. I also thank the Whips, who have worked hard to ensure that we have had the time to undertake that work. It has been an example of the best of how the House can work, rather than something we might want to return within 30 days. We look forward to continuing the debates on Report. I hope Government Members will continue to have these debates with us, whether on the Bill or more widely, because this subject is one that we are all passionate about.

David Amess: I wish to thank hon. Members for their kind and generous remarks. Mrs Osborne and I have greatly enjoyed chairing proceedings; I do not know whether we were supposed to. At all times hon. Members have kept in good order and fulfilled their fundamental duty to scrutinise the Bill thoroughly according to their own political perspectives. I would also like to thank the Hansard reporters for their hard work, the attendants, Doorkeepers and, most of all, our Clerk, without whose wise counsel in my ear we would not have kept in good order throughout our proceedings.

Bill, as amended, to be reported.

Committee rose.
Written evidence reported to the House
CR 25 Scott Mycock and David Weston
CR 26 Ticketmaster UK Ltd
CR 27 Energy UK
CR 28 Financial Services Consumer Panel